[tt] [Boston-announce] Next Meeting: Monday, September 8

[Eugen Leitl]

----- Forwarded message from Brian Peltonen <brianp at livingplaysets.com> -----

From: Brian Peltonen <brianp at livingplaysets.com>
Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2008 22:37:02 -0400
To: boston-announce at greythumb.org
Subject: [Boston-announce] Next Meeting: Monday, September 8
User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.14ubu (X11/20080505)

Grey Thumb Meeting Announcement

Grey Thumb is pleased to announce a presentation by Kyle Harrington on 
artificial embryogeny.

When: 7:00pm Monday, September 8, 2008
Where: The Asgard Irish Pub & Restaurant (350 Mass. Ave, Central Square, 
Cambridge)
Who: All are welcome

[Please Note: Due to the holiday, this meeting will be held on the 
second Monday of the month.]

Abstract: The simulation of multicellular organisms has been an 
underlying theme in a number of artificial life studies. The 
multicellular approach tends to be pursued by those interested in a 
bottom-up approach to modeling life, where multiple autonomous units 
form a single cohesive functional organism. This has been done for 
tissues and Braitenberg's Vehicles, and is being pursued for entire 
animals. An important benefit of a multicellular simulation comes from 
the embryogeny of the organism.

Artificial embryogeny is the study of the development and growth of an 
embryo. Such development processes have been studied by many 
researchers, but this has yet to lead to a functional simulation of the 
embryogenesis of a known animal. I will discuss a variety of research 
thrusts in the area of artificial embryogeny.

An essential feature of biological embryogenesis is the differentiation 
of cell types. I will spend the rest of the talk discussing one of the 
most important cell types for an organism to interact with its 
environment, the sensor. This is a model of a general purpose sensor 
designed for multiple types of stimuli. The sensor is focused on
reducing the bandwidth of the connection between the organism and its 
environment. I argue that optimizing for this bandwidth reduction is 
important for distributed 3d environments, such as the EvoGrid. I will 
show a biologically-inspired sensor system at work in a variety of 
settings (including observing both Karl Sims' creatures and breve's
walkers, the real-world, and an embedded ocular object for breve).

Kyle Harrington holds a B.A. from Hampshire College and is currently a 
Ph.D. student at Brandeis University. Website: http://cellicone.com

About Grey Thumb:
Grey Thumb is a group of scientists, engineers, hackers, artists, and 
hobbyists in the Boston metro area with a strong interest in artificial 
life, artificial intelligence, biology, complex systems and other 
related topics. http://www.greythumb.org

Note: Parking is available for $3 (with validation) in the garage behind 
The Asgard on Green St.
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----- End forwarded message -----
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Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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